NOTE: The launch was scrubbed for today (May 27, 2020) at T-minus 16 minutes and 54 seconds due to weather (they actually had a tornado warning!!)
The next attempt is scheduled for this Saturday, May 30 at 2:22 Central Daylight Time (that’s 3:22 Eastern for those on the east coast).
What I’m doing today is watching the Dragon Space-X launch. This whole post is about the dreams I had and how much I still love NASA and the space program.
Some people don’t know that I am a HUGE space fan. I’ve been one literally all my life. The first space shot, Sputnik 1–the Russian first flight happened when I was 7 months old. I remember sitting in the living room with my mom watching Freedom 7, the first American launch in 1951, when I was just 5. I don’t think I missed any of the launches over the years, catching them as they were played on TV at the actual launch time or in the news reports afterward.
The TV coverage was a big deal back then. We would gather around and it was one of the important history things. Would the rocket make it up? Would the astronaut be okay with the launch and landing. We held our breath as it launched, we watched for the parachutes coming down.
I grew up with NASA. I remember the Apollo program. Apollo 1 was lost to a fire on January 27, 1967, taking with it astronauts Virgil “Gus” Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chaffee. I remember the next step, Apollo 7. We all held our breath that that one would be okay.
I’m one of those kids who got to watch the Apollo 11 launch, and then watch the first man, commander Neil Armstrong, walk on the moon with fellow astronaut lunar module commander Edwin E. “Buzz” Aldrin Jr while command module pilot Michael Collins circled above in orbit. Being 10 years old on July 20, 1967 I have very clear memories of sitting in our den at 9:56 pm with my parents, getting to see the first steps.
While I was excited before that, it was the time I thought “I would love to do that someday. It didn’t hurt that I was also a big fan of a TV show called Star Trek as well.
My love of Star Trek intersected with my love of the space program in the mid-1970s when NASA rolled out the first space shuttle. When we, the fandom called “Trekies” found out they were going to start the program with this first one, we spread the word and sent hundred of thousands of letters to President Gerald Ford to name it Enterprise. When they rolled it out, the name Enterprise was emblazoned on the side and the origininal cast, without William Shatner, were there to celebrate it.
I started college that year and I went into journalism so that I could, eventually, go to work in the NASA public relations department or for a news service working with NASA. I ended up quitting college for several years when I had kids and when I went back, I had lost the drive for journalism, but found a love of history. I can remember at least three papers I wrote on the space program over those years when I went back.
Of course, with all the cheering and celebration of all things connected with NASA, there were things that were tragic and sad. I remember the day the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded on lift off. I will remember that until the day I die, a call from a friend to me at work at a bookstore in the mall, “They’re gone, they are all gone.” When I finally got her to tell me what she was talking about, I sprinted down to a sports store that had a television and I just stood there with tears flowing.
Later, I remember when the Columbia broke up on reentry. That one was about 100 miles from where we live near NASA. Living here with the space community, I saw the tragedy in a different light. It really became close to me when I found out the commander was from my hometown, Amarillo Texas. Rick Husband, who graduated from Amarillo High in 1975, the same year I graduated from a cross-town rival school was the Mission Commander. His pilot on that shuttle flight was William McCool who grew up 110 miles south of Amarillo in Lubbock Texas.
We were at Ellington Field, the NASA plane flight base in Houston, when they ferried the last of the shuttles, the Endeavor to California Science Center in Los Angeles, The other remaining shuttles were donated to other various museums around the US. We wanted to get Enterprise for Space Center Houston but Senator Charles Schumer of New York managed to grab that one for their museum at the U.S.S. Intrepid Sea, Air, and Space museum there.
Space Center Houston did get a shuttle, the Space Shuttle Explorer is a mock up that was built to the original plans of the other shuttles. It lived at the Kennedy Space Center until the fleet was retired. Kennedy got the Atlantis and their mock up, now called Independence, was ferried by barge to Space Center. They brought it into Clear Lake on the barge, then towed it down Nasa Road 1 to Johnson Space Center, June 1, 2012, pulling up street lights. It sat on the ground until August 14, 2014 when they brought one of the Boeing 747 ferry aircraft, called NASA 905 to put the Independence on it for a display. You can go in and explore them.
So, I’m a huge supporter of the space program and I’ll be watching on Saturday when they make another attempt to get the Dragon 2 off the launch pad to carry Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley to the International Space Station.
It’s going to be great!
